


On the Cusp

by huevoplatano



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Dubcon Kissing, Established Relationship, F/M, Mind Manipulation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 21:23:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20682134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huevoplatano/pseuds/huevoplatano
Summary: Terra has amnesia and must rely on her friends to help her regain her memories, but when Kefka confronts her claiming they are in a relationship, she does not know who to believe anymore.





	On the Cusp

**Author's Note:**

> this is 100% self indulgent nonsense. but, if you clicked on this fic, then maybe you're just as thirsty as i am. 
> 
> as usual, i'll add tags as i go, though i don't even really know what i'm gonna do with this fic. i'm just writing for the sake of writing right now, but i'll always add tags and warnings as i see fit. 
> 
> happy reading! :D

The hallways of Figaro Castle were oddly quiet, though that wasn’t much of a surprise considering the sun had set a pretty good while ago. Still, Terra sat on the edge of her bed, wringing her hands in and out as her mind ran away with her from the day’s events. 

So much had happened in such a short amount of time, it was overwhelming and she couldn’t think straight anymore. First, there was waking up in that strange man’s house, then being told she had been a slave to the Empire, then getting chased through the caves of Narshe, only to meet Locke—she sighed, the day’s events jumbling together in her mind until she couldn’t remember certain things all that clearly anymore. 

All she knew now was that she was at Figaro Castle, sitting on the edge of her bed, occasionally peering out the window to the far side of the room where she could see sand blowing in the night air outside. She had been granted access to wander around the castle to her heart’s content, and although her curious nature did get the better of her sometimes, for now, she felt too exhausted to wander around. Maybe tomorrow, when she was well rested without the overwhelming thoughts plaguing her mind from today. 

Sighing yet again (and at this point it felt like the millionth time today), Terra leaned back on her bed, pulling her boots off, removing the sashes from around her waist, followed by most of her jewelry, and finally gently pulling her hair free from the tight ponytail. Immediately, there was a sense of relief from letting her hair down alone, and she scooted herself back on the bed before crawling under the covers, feeling very cozy despite being in a strange place such as this. 

Now facing the ceiling above her, she felt that strange sense of unease that had been clouding the back of her mind all day. Yes, part of it had to do with being in an unfamiliar bed, an unfamiliar place, and definitely someone’s castle like this. She felt like an outsider, and well—she _was_ an outsider. Despite being welcomed with open arms, despite Locke and Edgar being super supportive about this whole situation—Terra bit her bottom lip as her eyes glazed over the ceiling. 

Something felt _wrong_. Very wrong. Yet, no matter how long she stewed in her thoughts, how often her imagination flew away and she tuned out the world around her to ponder on it, trying as hard as she might to recover the memories she had lost before waking up in that house—nothing made sense. As far as Terra knew, she had been sleeping for the past year or so. Or maybe it had been two years? She couldn’t say for sure. There were bits and pieces here, memories she knew were definitely real and not fragments of a dream. Memories where she was training with soldiers in a courtyard, parrying attacks with a sword, only to hold out her hands and attack with a ball of fire she had conjured right in the palm of her hand, resulting in startled cries and a slew of terrified faces staring back at her. 

Oh right, she could remember why they looked at her that way now. Because she had the ability to conjure fire from her palms so easily like that. And for some reason, that made her special...or so they told her. Something about how Terra having the inherent ability to produce magic made her a prime candidate for one of the Empire’s elite soldiers. No easy task, for sure.

And yet, the memories only got blurry from there. She could remember little things like sparring with a soldier, taking a walk through the large, mechanical corridors, seeing the familiar face of—wait. 

Terra blinked as she recalled the figure of a man dressed in gaudy robes and sashes. Such a flashy color scheme, he stood out like a sore thumb amidst the desert sand and gray walls of Figaro Castle. Terra herself had been tucked away inside, but caught a glance of the man from the nearby window as he spoke with Edgar about something. She couldn’t make out the words from her spot, but could see his exclamations of disdain through his body language alone as the conversation obviously turned sour. A heated back and forth started, some raised voices, mostly from the gaudy man’s end, and finally ended with him turning on his heels and vanishing down the stairs.

She could only make out his flashy clothes from where she stood, but—there was something oddly familiar about his presence itself. Had she seen him somewhere before? No, that wasn’t right. Terra shook her head. Maybe she was remembering wrong, but being in the position she was in, not able to trust her own memories at this point, she couldn’t shake the feeling she knew him, though at the distance she was at, couldn’t make out his face or any other features that might trigger a memory. Maybe if she had been closer, could see his face, it might spark something inside to give her a clue about who this mysterious person was.

He was a familiar presence, and that was all. 

Still. 

Terra shifted under the covers, her thoughts returning to her in a slew of condensed, nonsensical, and disjointed clusters. There was no filing through all that was going through her head now, and the more she spent trying to make sense of things, the more her head only hurt her, until she closed her eyes from the pain. The headache had been a dull throb in the back of her mind until this point, but now that she lie here, with little else to do than mull over everything, it was apparent now more than ever. There was no getting any answers tonight, and she may as well try and sleep it off and try again tomorrow.

Sighing yet again, Terra shifted onto her side before dozing off into an uncomfortable sleep. 

* * *

The nightmare caused her to start awake, drenched in a cold sweat, to which Terra leaned up in bed, the feeling of her heart pounding hard against her chest the most prominent thing she was aware of as she fought to calm down. 

A dream, just a dream, albeit a horribly awful one. Her dreams too were coming in disjointed clusters, not making much sense, but at least she could distinguish this from reality. A nightmare might be awful, but at least she was here in bed, clutching at the covers and trying to calm herself down. Now that she was awake, she couldn’t shake the lingering feeling of the dream from her mind, despite the fact the dream itself wasn’t that clear anymore. All Terra could remember was absolute horror as she lost control of herself and began casting magic left and right. Maybe she had hurt someone doing that, but maybe she didn’t. All that remained of the dream was the feeling of absolute grief.

_Get a grip_, she chastised herself. It was just a stupid dream. Nothing more. Certainly nothing to get upset over.

Now awake, and growing more annoyed at herself for waking up in the middle of the godforsaken night, Terra allowed herself to slide off the edge of the bed, her feet landing next to where she sat her boots earlier that night. With the feeling of dread from the dream weighing on her mind, Terra decided to slip her shoes on and take a walk. As long as she was silent, and kept to herself, she hoped it wouldn’t bother anyone if she decided to wander around the castle right now. Everyone should have been asleep by now, but she just wanted some fresh air to clear her head. Maybe taking a walk would calm her down enough to get back to sleep. At least, she hoped it would calm her down enough to stop the nightmares too.

With her boots now slid comfortably on her feet, Terra gripped the hair tie that had fallen into the sashes on the floor and tied her hair up in a ponytail before wandering up the stairs adjacent to her room. Her goal was to follow the trail of stairs all the way to the balcony that rested at the top of the building. Well, it wasn’t really a balcony—more or less a lookout point for the Figaro guards, but with it being late at night, she figured it would be the perfect place to sit and watch the moon for a while. If there was a guard up there, she would just leave and station herself somewhere else.

As she gripped the railing of the stairs, her head soon poking out from the entrance to the roof, Terra caught a glance of the big bright moon directly above her. Luckily for her, there didn’t seem to be anybody up here, as she assumed the nighttime guards moved to the main castle to watch for anything suspicious. Her room was not connected to the main building, but rather its own area for guests and the like. She was assuming anyway. 

It was nice of Edgar to let her have her own room, as she didn’t think she was worthy of such a thing, being an uninvited guest and all. Though, she wasn’t sure if she was all that uninvited to begin with. Locke had been the one to drag her all the way south to the desert to meet with the king, but they had made little progress in regards to her getting any memories back, or even knowing what it was she should do now. 

From what they told her, she had been enslaved by the Empire, forced to bend to their will, and used as a weapon. 

But—

Terra gazed skyward, her focus entirely on the moon as she crouched to her knees to seat herself at the edge of the roof in between the merlons. 

But, she didn’t remember doing anything like that. And when she had tried to protest with these people about her lack of memories, they assured her everything was alright now, her torment was over, yadda yadda, the same storybook prose she had only read in fairytales. Somehow, she had her doubts about her own enslavement being true. Yes, the old man showed her the slave crown, the device he claimed had been the thing that sapped her of her own free will, but Terra didn’t recall any sort of memory of that thing. He may as well have held up a piece of cheese to her and told her she was suffering from amnesia after having ingested it.

Lowering her gaze, Terra looked to the abundant expanse of sand that stretched out before her, as if the entire world was composed of nothing but sand. It truly was a sight to behold, and with the moon cascading down upon the castle to great a giant shadow, it was quite the sight from so high up. Never would Terra have considered the desert of all places to be something beautiful, but here she was, enjoying the midnight air, the soft gushes of wind that tousled her hair, and the sight of how the sand almost seemed to sparkle below the moon.

Terra sighed. Even with this beautiful visual of the desert before her, her worries soon surfaced and plagued on her mind once again. She couldn’t help but wonder who were truly the ones to be trusted in this situation. For all she knew, these people who claimed to have rescued her could very well be morally corrupt thieves, or politically twisted dictators posing as elegant kings. They could have been the ones lying to her about her enslavement, tricking her into believing their pleas so that they could use her magic for themselves.

Terra shook her head, letting a small laugh escape through her nose as she drew her knees up to her chin. She certainly had an overactive imagination, which only seemed to grow worse as the night continued on. But, she couldn’t help it. A lot had happened, and there was a big gap in her memory right now, a gap she could only rely on others to fill for her for the time being. 

The old man did say her memories would return to her in time, but she was already getting impatient. She wanted to know what happened to her, how she ended up in this mess, and who she could trust. _Right now._

Locke and Edgar had been nothing but kind to her, and her intuition told her there was nothing evil about these two, as they hadn’t given her a reason to mistrust them. They were kind and helpful. 

And yet. 

A nagging voice in the back of her mind pleaded with her, no, no, this was all wrong. Somebody was lying, lying about what happened to her, where she came from, how she ended up here, and no matter how much she tried ignoring these thoughts, they always came back to haunt her twofold. 

With her chin resting in the middle of her knees, Terra sucked in a breath, allowing the cold night air to seep in before letting it out, hoping it would take the confusion and doubt with it. It did not. The least it could do was ease her mind enough for her to get some sleep.

“Having trouble sleeping, my dear?”

The sound of the voice right behind her caused her to start, Terra whipping around from her spot on the roof, almost toppling over the edge as she searched for the owner of the voice. In her awkward movement, she had twisted around, one foot placed in front while the other dangled from the side as she fought to gain her bearings.

He made his presence known immediately, as he was leaning against one of the merlons. It was not hard to miss him as he was dressed just as flashy as she remembered seeing him through the window earlier that morning. The man who had the heated conversation with Edgar was standing right before her, an expression of amusement sewn on his face as he watched her.

Terra was to her feet in an instant, remaining on the defense as she had no idea who or what she was dealing with. All she knew about this person was from a distance, he seemed not to care for Edgar all that much. Though now with him standing mere feet before her, she got a perfectly good look at his face and found...he wasn’t familiar to her in the least. At least not his face. That was strange, considering his attire had stuck out to her almost immediately. Why were his clothes of all things the familiar thing to her, but not his face? Maybe it was because he had a full thick coat of makeup covering most of his features, but she couldn’t be sure. Terra was almost positive she would have remembered a man who dressed this outlandish. Just from this first impression of him merely standing before her, she knew she wouldn’t soon forget this person.

“Ohhh, didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s impolite to stare?” His tone struck a nerve in her for some reason. The way he spoke, enunciating his words, and trilling the very end of his sentences upward made it seem like he was playfully teasing her, though something about the way his eyes stared straight through her put her on edge. She could have sworn he was familiar, but the longer she stared, the less familiar he became. It was such a strange feeling.

And for some reason, she found herself apologizing. “S-sorry…” Her face grew hot at the sloppy way she responded, but—after all, he was kind of right. She _was_ staring at him, and even though he had startled her, coming up behind her and everything without so much as making a sound (how on earth had he gotten up here without even alerting the guards?), he hadn’t actually given her a reason to suspect malicious intent from him. She didn’t really have a reason to stay on her guard, but she remained so, waiting for him to make a move. After all, despite his nonchalant slouch against the merlon, he could decide at any moment to attack her, though Terra argued with herself this person had no reason to (unless he did and she just didn’t remember anything about him). Ugh, her head was hurting with all the thoughts running through at once.

And he moved from his slouch, now standing to his full height, and even at the distance between them, Terra could tell he stood taller than her. “My _dear_, must you stare at me with such an expression on your face?” He threw his head back, making a choked noise of disdain as he did so, and Terra couldn’t help but take notice of how theatrical his movements were. He swept his arms out in giant motions, his feet moving in unison with the rest of his body as he twirled about, the sashes around his waist and jewelry adorned on his body jingling at the movement. It gave her the impression of someone performing on stage and not a creepy guy walking up behind her in the middle of the night. His actions and appearance were all so entrancing, she couldn’t _help_ but stare.

Again, she awkwardly apologized to him. “I-I’m sorry. I was just taking a walk. You startled me is all.” Now that she thought about it, despite the conversation this man had with Edgar earlier that morning and how not very pleasant the exchanged seemed to be, Edgar didn’t speak to her at all about it. In fact, he and Locke exchanged words while Terra looked on in curiosity as to what was going on, but they didn’t say anything about this man. If she hadn’t known any better, Terra would have just written it off as some debate between politicians, but it didn’t concern her in the slightest.

So, how was she supposed to know if he was bad news or not? Given the fact he hadn’t attacked her, or shown any type of aggression thus far, Terra could use her own judgement to decide whether or not he was friendly. And so far, he just seemed incredibly weird, but not bad. He even spoke to her as if they had met before.

“Oh, forgive me, darling, I would have visited you during normal business hours if I could.”

She blinked, not entirely sure she understood what he meant. So, she tried playing along, at least until he gave her a reason not to. “You were the one at the castle this morning, right?” He perked up at her question before shooting her a toothy smile and allowing her another dramatic flash of his robes as he spun in a half circle. The movement actually made Terra snort through her nose. This person was so…loud? Not in a literal sense, but just a personality sense. It was bewitching to watch him move and speak. He really did have the mannerisms of a performer.

“Oh yes, that was me. I’m so flattered you recognized me, my dear. I feared you had forgotten all about me~” The way he ended his sentence in a sing song way caused a strange sensation of butterflies to creep up in Terra’s stomach, though she had no idea why. 

But, he had just answered one of her questions for her. Did she really know him? Or used to know him? He certainly acted as if he knew her. “I’m sorry, um—Mister—” Her cheeks gushed red as she was unsure what to call him, only to earn a soft giggle from him at her fumbling. “I don’t remember you. I don’t remember a whole lot, to be honest.” Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to be spilling the beans that she had amnesia, as she didn’t know this person’s intentions, but then again, she didn’t know Locke or Edgar’s intentions either. Terra mentally gave out an annoyed moan toward herself. What a dumb position to be in, not remembering anybody, or able to tell if someone was good or bad. Everyone around her held the cards and she was stuck here with nothing but their word. What good was their word worth if she didn’t even know who to trust?

At this admittance, she noticed a quick change in his attitude. He stopped twirling his cloak behind him so that the wind would catch it, causing it to billow with his movements, and instead, his eyes glued to her as he faced away from the side. He seemed caught off guard by that just as much as she was, and she felt nervous all of a sudden as she found herself twiddling her fingers at the hard stare he was giving her. With him no longer moving about as he was, the strange change from long flowing theatrics to—_nothing_, was unsettling to say the least. He almost looked creepy staring at her that way, a colorful statue that silhouetted in front of the moon, and it put her back on edge.

“Um…” She wasn’t sure what to say now, feeling uncomfortable with him staring at her like that and eventually turned her gaze to the middle of the roof where the stairs led back down into the building as she struggled for something to say. Just as long as she didn’t have to look at his face. “Did I—I mean, do I know you?” He could always lie, no matter what his answer was. Terra had absolutely no idea who to trust right now, as she couldn’t even trust her own memories at this point. Asking him these questions was pointless, but she did so anyway, just to feel a sense of right, a sense of belonging. A sense that his words were the right things for her to hear and she could start rebuilding her memories back.

Too quick for her to react, Terra was only aware of the sound of his clothes fluttering in the wind as he almost seemed to glide over right next to her, appearing so suddenly and so close, she almost backed right off between the merlons, but he caught her by the arm before she could stumble backward and pulled her close. His gaze burned into hers, and Terra could only let out a squeak of surprise being held in his arms like this. Her face burned in embarrassment at the idea this position would have been romantic had she not been aware of the fact if he chose to let her go, she might very well topple over the edge. Even in this situation, she could think of the most embarrassing things.

“My dear,” he said, his voice smooth like molasses, all hint of the playful tone gone. It sent a chill up her spine. “Of course, you know me, and of course I know you, otherwise I wouldn’t have come to fetch you. I wouldn’t have walked all the way out here in the desert if it wasn’t _for you_.”

She gulped, not sure why, but feeling sweaty with how casually he gripped her that way, and was still holding onto her. Something about this seemed all too familiar to her, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. A lingering feeling, like he had held her this way before, like her body itself was remembering the feeling of his fingers digging into her skin, but her mind refused to accept this as a real memory. It was only a fleeting feeling, but nothing else. A sense of déjà vu. 

“I-I know you then?” Terra couldn’t even trust herself at this point, and had to rely on others to fill the gaps. Maybe this man was truthful in what he said, but she wasn’t sure who to put her trust in. There were too many people from two different sides telling her what was supposed to be right, but she couldn’t deny the look this man gave her that bore into her skull was so familiar, she was trying so hard to capture what this feeling was. Neither Locke nor Edgar had elicited such a feeling as this, and Terra was coming close to the first thing since she’d woken up to something that actually felt right. Maybe he _was_ telling the truth and he knew her, but she’d have to--

And then he kissed her. 

It was so sudden and so unexpected, Terra gasped as he not so gracefully crushed his mouth against hers. The kiss was sloppy and almost desperate from the way he came at her, now gripping both of her arms as her reflexes kicked in and she attempted to push him off, only to be overtaken once more as he pressed into her harder, as if trying to consume her. Part of her tried to keep focus on the edge behind her. One wrong move would send her tumbling down, but as far as she knew, this person was still a stranger to her, despite the familiar feelings he brought with him, and Terra gave into her instincts to push him off of her, shoving at his chest to get him off, but he did not budge. She may as well have tried to move the castle with her bare hands.

Finally, he pulled back, his breathing heavy and leaving Terra gasping and hot faced as she reached up to wipe her mouth out of reflex, pulling back a smudged tint of his red lipstick that had made its way to her lips. She was about to ask what in the hell he thought he was doing, assaulting her like this, whatever in the world was wrong with him for throwing himself on her, despite claiming to know who she was, but his next words stunned her into silence. 

“We’re lovers, Terra.”


End file.
